*(But try not to enjoy it.)
As if it weren’t in enough trouble already over its decades-long sheltering of serial child molester Jimmy Savile (whom it also provided with opportunities for his one-sided pleasures), the BBC broadcast a simulation of a snuff movie on its main channel in its prime-time 9.00 pm slot on Sunday, leaving itself open to the charge of enabling illegal sexual activity across the nation.
In the first of a new series called Ripper Street, which trades on the mystique of the brutal murders of young women in East London in the late 1880s (a recurring motif in British crime drama – see, for example, ITV’s own recent prime-time drama series Whitechapel, about a modern day East End still absorbed in Jack The Ripper’s miasma), it centred on the activities of a fictitious aristocrat who hired young prostitutes in order to murder them during sex in various live tableau drawn from Grand Tour classical scenarios (Pharaoh strangles Egyptian nubile in front of pyramids, etc).
The episode depicted a scene being filmed by a nascent cinematographer, the resultant celluloid constituting a new art form that foreshadowed the current age of extreme internet porn. Not that a snuff movie acted out as a drama within the context of a detective fiction on TV is in any breach of the law in itself, or for that matter, good taste — if present day standards in cinema are a guide. But it provided plenty of opportunity for a breach of the law to take place. All that would be required is that a viewer copied the programme to their computer, isolated the particular segments that depicted a death taking place, and kept this for what could be considered sexual pleasure of their own (as opposed to the fictitious pleasure of the on-screen character).
The law is quite specific here. Such a segment of moving imagery contravenes Sections 63 and 64 of the Criminal Justice and Information Act 2008, which states that: “It is an offence for a person to be in possession of an extreme pornographic image … if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way … an act which threatens a person’s life”, and “if it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been extracted (whether with or without other images) solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal”.
So, can the BBC be accused of enabling such pleasure in its depiction of such an image? Dramas like this play on the allure of so-called deviant sexual behaviours (quite how deviant they actually are is for another discussion), showing gratuitous acts of sexual violence while simultaneously presenting them as evil and in need of prevention by the heroic acts of decent guardians of public probity. Mostly it concerns the recurring figure of the Damsel in Distress, a young, attractive, innocently trusting woman led into danger and graphically disabled (usually involving bondage) while subjected to the rapacious attentions of a persecuting male.
Such scenes can be played overtly or covertly, often with no hint of the sexual connotations (Ripper Street plays it straight ahead kinky), though the fact such connotations exist is suggested by the wording of the law itself (“must reasonably be assumed”). Often though, a direct nod to audience tastes is explicit. The recent success of the 50 Shades Of Grey novel franchise testifies to a widespread public appetite for the explicit power and submission elements of sexual play, something that mainstream film-makers have always acknowledged, with the bottom line of audience attendance uppermost in their artistic minds.
Recently the heroine of Channel 4′s much praised Homeland series fell into the hands of her prey, the worlds’s leading terrorist, and was subjected to death threats as she knelt bound and gagged at his feet (he was also shown being tender towards her in other scenes, underlining the erotic potential): a scene the whole series was almost committed to enact at some point or another.
Rather like the tabloid newspapers with their exposures of orgies, they are presented in a way that invites us to view them as wrong whilst deriving vicarious pleasure from graphic description and imagery. All of which is a case of mainstream culture reflecting the current climate of taste among its core audience, which in the case of Ripper Street, is pretty general. Society is not, and may never, be ready to openly acknowledge that a significant body of viewers derive libidinous pleasure from dramatic depictions of transgressive sexual behaviour, but by presenting it in contexts that temper the otherwise aggressive consumption, programme makers like the BBC can present the murder of a young woman in an explicit sex scene and not break the law. And it can do this with an implicit understanding that the programme created has a sexual allure.
So what about that law and its wording? Doesn’t it amount to the most ridiculously outmoded philosophical standpoint? Isn’t the prurient control-freak meddling in the minds of the population symptomatic of so much political confusion? Many cases have been brought to court using the law, mostly when scenes of extreme internet porn have been found in raids conducted for other offences. But so far there does not appear to have been conviction brought for the possession of scenes extracted from legally sanctioned cinema or television releases.
But look at the clip below from the film Casino Royale, a scene that plays directly to a sadomasochistic male gay audience (though it is quite likely to appeal to straight women of certain tastes too), just as the scene in the original book by Ian Fleming was overtly placed to do. And consider this: the presence of this scene on your hard drive would constitute proof enough that you wanked over it, or used it to stimulate sex with a partner. And this is illegal under present law.
For more information and relevant sections of the law see www.spannertrust.org. Find the relevant sections of the Act here and the CPS guidelines here.
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